The ‘Greatest Show on Earth’, where it is ‘all in or nothing’ to ‘risk everything’ to lift ‘the biggest prize in the game’ – the hyperbole is almost never ending.
It’s easy to be cynical about FIFA and how their manipulation of the World Cup has made it as much a corporate commodity as it is a football tournament.
Brazilians, though, have gone well past that stage with many infuriated by the gross over-spending ($11.6bn and counting) to host the competition and the profits gleaned by FIFA, helped by their brazen tax exemptions.
FIFA, itself, as a body is at perhaps it’s lowest ebb in terms of reputation and worldwide perception. Corruption claims, and the general smugness and navel-gazing of it’s leading figures has led to distrust and disenchantment by those who some involved in football would call consumers, but are more traditionally known as fans.
However, for all the distasteful things happening at the highest echelons of the game, we need a good World Cup more than anything.
Since the Premier League introduced PLCs and swung its doors open to foreign investment, the league has become a sporting arms race, and more often than not those paying the highest wages or spending the most on transfers have been made champions.
That has had a knock-on effect in Europe – football’s powerbase – with Paris Saint-Germain breaking transfer records seemingly by the week under Qatari-ownership, Real Madrid even out-doing themselves in the ridiculous-spending stakes and Barcelona plunging themselves further and further into debt in a bid to keep up.
For the first time in history Italian clubs have yielded with Internazionale and Roma under Indonesian and American ownership and many in Spain now following suit, Valencia being the highest-profile so far.
The Champions League, with its hugely divisive prize money is now regarded as the pinnacle, so much so it leads many to question whether the game’s best really care about the World Cup anymore.
Domestic football has become more about money than ever before. But this is where the World Cup will always stand alone as it is financially a level playing field.
Yes, certain federations can afford better coaches, training facilities and hotels, but players play for their country (with a few exceptions) because that is what they were born to do.
Brazil, Argentina, Spain, Italy, Germany etc will always perform, it’s in their DNA, but when nations like Bosnia and Herzegovina – population 3.8 million – are in a position to compete against the elite it says a lot about the virtues of international football.
Yet we haven’t seen a good World Cup since France in 1998. There have been historic moments and flickers of brilliance but too often it has underwhelmed.
Now it returns to football’s spiritual home and if there is one country that could host a truly legendary World Cup, it is Brazil.
FIFA need this competition to be a success, but more than that the world does, to show the sport is not about dollar signs but simply who is the rightful winner.
